Marjorie Gateson

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Marjorie Augusta Gateson (January 17, 1891, Brooklyn, New York - April 17, 1977, New York City),^[1] was a character actress in Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s.

Gateson made her film debut in 1931^[1] after a career on the stage of more than two decades, playing secondary character roles as women of wealth and breeding, who were often haughty and aloof. She is perhaps best known for her roles as the society matron who attempts to thwart Mae West's plans for social climbing in the 1935 film Goin' To Town and for a kinder socialite who Harold Lloyd teaches to box in 1934's The Milky Way. Her other films include The King's Vacation (1933) (her largest role, the female lead opposite George Arliss), Bureau of Missing Persons (1933), Private Number (1936), You'll Never Get Rich (1941), and Meet The Stewarts (1942). The size of her roles varied and occasionally she played unbilled cameo parts.

Gateson's film work petered out in the late 1940's she jumped into the television industry, making her small screen debut in 1949. She was featured in the 1949 television soap opera One Man's Family and found success in 1954 at age 63 playing matriarch Grace Harris Tyrell on the daytime soap The Secret Storm, a role she would play until 1968. Gateson also made numerous other television appearances in the 1950's, including episodes of Hallmark Hall of Fame, Robert Montgomery Presents, and United States Steel Hour.

Gateson died in 1977 of pneumonia after several years of ill health.